Movie Review: Capone

Capone ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Josh Trank.

Written by Josh Trank.

Starring: Tom Hardy (Fonse - Al Capone), Linda Cardellini (Mae), Matt Dillon (Johnny), Al Sapienza (Ralphie), Kathrine Narducci (Rosie), Noel Fisher (Junior), Gino Cafarelli (Gino), Mason Guccione (Tony),  Jack Lowden (Crawford), Kyle MacLachlan (Doctor Karlock), Rose Bianco (Nanna), Manny Fajardo (Zambini), Christopher Bianculli (Young Tony), Edgar Arreola (Rodrigo), Jhemma Ziegler (Betty). 

 

I have to give Josh Trank and Tom Hardy some credit here – they undoubtedly made the precise movie they wanted to make in Capone. And, again, credit where due, it is completely unlike any other movie about Al Capone, and really about any mob figure, either real or fictional. They have succeeded in making a film that completely and totally drains any romanticism out of being in the mob, but do so by basically not showing Capone’s mob years at all. No, this film is entirely about the last year of Capone’s life – released from prison, suffering from syphilis induced mental problems, unable to control his bowel movements, and living out his life in relative luxury in a Florida mansion – although one that he, and his family, know they really cannot afford. He has nothing left, his legacy is destroyed, and he is a hollow, empty man just waiting to die.

 

So, bravo, I guess for Trank – coming back after his disastrous stint behind the camera for the would-be blockbuster Fantastic Four (2015). He got Fantastic Four because he did a remarkable job directing something that felt like a blockbuster on the cheap – Chronicle – and Fantastic Four was supposed to be his inroads into making more and more blockbusters – a Star Wars, Jurassic Park, etc. And it all ended. He was taken off of Fantastic Four, had no final cut, and the stories that came out about his shoot doomed his future prospects. He became the blockbuster director that never was. In the long run perhaps this will be good for Trank’s career – if not his bank account – because if Capone shows anything, it’s a director completely committed to his vision, which isn’t something blockbusters usually encourage or allow.

 

But what exactly is that vision? You kind of get everything you need to get from Capone from the opening sequence – where Hardy’s Capone stalks around his mansion, seemingly paranoid that someone is there, until you realize he’s just playing hide and seek with the kids. He is a lion in winter, a once powerful man, reduced to this. From there, we get a lot of scenes of people telling him his legacy is over, a lot of questioning about a supposed $10 million he hid before prison, which even he doesn’t know where it is. He is questioned by the Feds – but lets his lawyer do all the talking, his statement clear enough when he shits his pants in front of them. There is one last impotent flurry of violence near the end of the film, but that’s all it is.

 

In Hardy, Trank found the right collaborator. Hardy, like Trank, is nothing if not fully committed – and this certainly continues his streak of performances where he tries to be as unintelligible as possible in his ever line reading. There is more than a little of Brando in Hardy’s performance – both for good and for ill, mixing Brando’s early period commitment, with his later period of not giving a shit – and I know that doesn’t sound like its possible, but somehow it is. Hardy is, of course, a brilliant actor – but like Nicolas Cage, he doesn’t always seem to know when or how to modulate. His performance here is precisely what he wants it to be – whatever that is.

 

What Capone ultimately shows is why you usually do not make biopics about people in this stage of life. The film doesn’t care about anything that made Capone famous, just wants to show you the pathetic shell he was at the end. In that, it undeniably succeeds. Now whether you want to see it or not, is another story.

Movie Review: Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four
Directed by: Josh Trank.
Written by: Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg & Josh Trank based on the comic book created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Starring: Miles Teller (Reed Richards), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm), Kate Mara (Sue Storm), Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm / The Thing), Toby Kebbell (Victor Von Doom / Dr. Doom), Reg E. Cathey (Dr. Franklin Storm), Tim Blake Nelson (Dr. Allen).

I cannot be the only one tired of superhero origin stories. They are all basically the same story – normal people somehow get superpowers, either because they make them, or because they get hit with some sort of radiation or drug or animal that should kill them, but doesn’t. They spend much of their time learning to use their new powers, before the filmmakers realize they’re approaching the two hour mark, and need to have an epic action sequence between the new hero and the super villain – who follows the exact same arc on the dark side – and then set everything up for the sequel, where the filmmakers will be free from having to establish the rules of this world (which we know anyway), and just tell a story for once. Most superheroes have their origin story – and they’re almost all lame, but filmmakers continue to insist on churning them out – probably because they continue to make money, and to be fair, if they are well executed, they can be kind of fun (also, it’s easier than coming up with something more original for the superheroes to do). Even when the studios insist on rebooting already known quantities – like Spider-Man, or now The Fantastic Four – they still seem to need to start all over again with the origin story.

This new Fantastic Four is a perfect example of how not to do an origin story. It falls into the same traps that all origin stories do – which is that they spend so much time setting everything up, that there’s no time for a story – and then some. This is a film that bizarrely doesn’t even give the heroes their powers until nearly an hour into the film (which doesn’t even run 100 minutes). The characters don’t even really have time to learn how to use their powers before they’re set on a collision course with evil, and the movie ends. Who thought that audiences who wanted to see yet another Fantastic Four movie (when the original, and its sequel, both sucked) – would find it more interesting to see the characters doing science than using their superpowers?

This film opens on a young Reed Richards (who will grow up to be Miles Teller – as a high school student), who with the help of his friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) creates a weird device that can teleport matter elsewhere (where to, they have no idea). But at the science fair there is someone who does know – Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) – who is impressed that Reed and Ben can bring it back – something his team has not been able to do. It isn’t long before Reed is off at a fancy school for geniuses (poor Ben, left behind) – building his device on a massive scale – alongside Franklin’s daughter, Sue (Kate Mara), his son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and an insecure genius named Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) – who, of course, will end up being the bad guy. Or one of them, because of course the movie also has Tim Blake Nelson in it, and he’s a bad guy as well – a corporate bad guy, who sees the military purposes of the science, and nothing else.

The film was co-written and directed by Josh Trank – who made a promising debut with Chronicle a few years back, and will now have to dig himself out of the mess he has made here (as well as getting fired from one of the Star Wars movies). Chronicle was hardly an indie – there were special effects galore in that one as well – but perhaps it wasn’t smart to leap directly from that into franchise filmmaking. Thinking back to it, Chronicle also spent a long time setting itself up – the difference, perhaps, being that Chronicle was a somewhat better story, with characters you actually cared about. The ending of that film was a mess, of course, but until then it was quite good. Nothing much works in Fantastic Four – it’s dull from the outset, and ever gets any better. A film with a cast this good, shouldn’t be this boring.

I will say this for the movie though – it’s hardly the epic disaster that many seemed to make it out to be when it was released this past summer. It’s not good – not even close – but it’s not epically terrible either – this will never be anyone’s choice for a “so bad, it’s good” watch – the film is just far too dull and uninspired to raise to that level. Instead, the filmmakers make every uninspired choice they possibly can – and end up with a movie that’s just plain dull.

Movie Review: Chronicle

Chronicle ***
Directed by: Josh Trank.
Written by: Max Landis.
Starring: Dane DeHaan (Andrew Detmer), Alex Russell (Matt Garetty), Michael B. Jordan (Steve Montgomery), Michael Kelly (Richard Detmer), Ashley Hinshaw (Casey Letter), Bo Petersen (Karen Detmer), Anna Wood (Monica).

Chronicle is an inventive new addition to the found footage genre – films like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield or Paranormal Activity – which are films supposedly shot the characters themselves who feel the need to document their every move. I find that sometimes, in these movies, I cannot help but wonder why the person filming never stops – Cloverfield in particular had this problem, because if you’re under attack by giant monsters, why the hell would you want to hobble yourself with a camera? But in Chronicle, it makes sense. The movie centers on three teenagers of the You Tube generation, who always seem to be filming themselves anyway. And once they get their telekinetic powers, and can control the camera with their minds, well, why not film all the cool stuff you can do?

I guess I should mention that the three teenagers are Andrew (Dane DeHaan), an antisocial, friendless loser at high school, his cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who is perhaps too smart for his own good, and likes Andrew, but pities him as well, and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), a football star running for class President – so essentially the most popular kid at school. Matt convinces Andrew to go to a rave with him, and it is there that the three of them find a crater in the ground – and being overly confident teenagers, jump right in. There is something down there, something alien perhaps, and then the camera shuts down. When we next see them, they have realized that something happened down in that crater – they have special powers, and can move things with their minds.

I liked how, when the teens find out they have telekinetic powers that just keep getting more powerful the more they use them, they continue act just like teenagers would. They have fun with their powers – using a leaf blower to blow the cheerleaders skirts up, playing around in a toy store by making a shopping cart go out of control and screwing with kids by making a teddy bear float. When they figure out that they can use their powers to fly, they do just that, even though it’s incredibly stupid and foolish. But have you seen the stupid things teenagers post on You Tube every day?

But even in these light hearted scenes, there is darkness lurking. Even though he now has friends, Andrew still feels like the high school loser. His mother is dying a slow, painful death from cancer, and his father is a mean drunk. He goes too far early in the film, and even though he apologizes for it, you don’t really believe it. Just when it seems he may be getting over that seething resentment though, things go horribly wrong, and you know he’s going to lose it.

The movie gets darker as it goes along, and the last half hour is very dark. I probably would have preferred a lower key ending to the special effects extravaganza that ends Chronicle, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.  

 
Chronicle is inventive in its use of camera work – the camera literally floats above the action at times, observing everything. It is well written Max Landis, son of John, and he has created three believable characters, who behave and talk like teenagers. The three central performances, by actors I have never seen before (or at least, I don’t remember) are not forced, but natural. The anger in the movie comes from a real place. The problem with many found footage movies – and this goes even for good ones like Paranormal Activity – is that the characters never really feel real. They do here, and that’s why Chronicle works way better than I ever expected it would.